Everybody acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is and you should know what your myth is, because it might be a tragedy. And maybe you don't want it to be.

Everybody acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is. And you should know what your myth is because it might be a tragedy and maybe you dont want it to be.

CAMPBELL: There has to be a training to help you open your ears so that you can begin to hear metaphorically instead of concretely. Freud and Jung both felt that myth is grounded in the unconscious. Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the Muses — or, in biblical language, “God.” This

Carl Jung wrote, 'Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.' We are complex beings who wake up every day and fight against being labeled and diminished with stereotypes and characterizations that don't reflect our fullness. Yet when we don't risk standing on our own and speaking out, when the options laid before us force us into the very categories we resist, we perpetuate our own disconnections and loneliness. When we are willing to risk venturing into the wilderness, and even becoming our own wilderness, we feel the deepest connection to our true self and to what matters the most.

CAMPBELL: There has to be a training to help you open your ears so that you can begin to hear metaphorically instead of concretely. Freud and Jung both felt that myth is grounded in the unconscious. Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the Muses — or, in biblical language, “God.” This is no fancy, it is a fact. Since the inspiration comes from the unconscious, and since the unconscious minds of the people of any single small society have much in common, what the shaman or seer brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone. So when one hears the seer’s story, one responds, “Aha! This is my story. This is something that I had always wanted to say but wasn’t able to say.” There has to be a dialogue, an interaction between the seer and the community. The seer who sees things that people in the community don’t want to hear is just ineffective. Sometimes they will wipe him out.

As adults, we create myths about ourselves and about our lives. We often use the myth to organize reality into a type of order. Anything that might contradict the myth seems to bring disorder that can feel disorienting. The myth forms a bias and matrix against which the person’s life experiences are evaluated. The sense of myth is often in sharp contrast to the macrostructural patterns that dominate our lives. The myths are often about the details of the events that happened, including who did what to whom. The pattern shows that the details are not causal but only orchestrative. If we describe the details, we see the uniqueness of the events that have taken place, and the story can seem like a one time deal. But if we describe the form and sequence of events, the critical moments, etc., we see how un-unique the story actually is. We can see that, yet again, the same damn thing has happened.

The hearer of myth, regardless of his level of culture, when he is listening to a myth, forgets, as it were, his particular situation and is projected into another world, into another universe which is no longer his poor little universe of every day. . . . The myths are true because they are sacred, because they tell him about sacred beings and events. Consequently, in reciting or listening to a myth, one resumes contact with the sacred and with reality, and in so doing one transcends the profane condition, the "historical situation." In other words one goes beyond the temporal condition and the dull self-sufficiency which is the lot of every human being simply because every human being is "ignorant" — in the sense that he is identifying himself, and Reality, with his own particular situation. And ignorance is, first of all, this false identification of Reality with what each one of us appears to be or to possess.

Jung believed that he was proceeding scientifically, but most Freudians remain convinced that he was inventing his own underground realm, rather as Tolkien invented Middle Earth. There is at least an element of truth in this view.

CAMPBELL: Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people’s myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts — but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is. Marriage, for example. What is marriage? The myth tells you what it is. It’s the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one. You are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is. It’s different from a love affair. It has nothing to do with that. It’s another mythological plane of experience. When people get married because they think it’s a long-time love affair, they’ll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is recognition of a spiritual identity. If we live a proper life, if our minds are on the right qualities in regarding the person of the opposite sex, we will find our proper male or female counterpart. But if we are distracted by certain sensuous interests, we’ll marry the wrong person. By marrying the right person, we

What should we do about myth: tell it from generation to generation, love it, and, in some part of ourselves, even believe it a little; but also open it, and add to it another midrash and another interpretation and some more knowledge, ours and that of others. There is no contradiction to them; "all are words of the living God," and the ability of man to contain different things is limitless. We may discuss myth at the dinner table, and say the blessing over these candles without any difficulty, and know and tell our children that the jar of oil, as a metaphor for continuous culture, will never be lacking. ("What Should We Do about Myth?")

A myth, therefore, is true because it is effective, not because it gives us factual information. If, however, it does not give us new insight into the deeper meaning of life, it has failed.

Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives – they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human.

Myth functions as an affirmation of self that transcends the temporal. It guides our attention toward a view of ourselves, a possibility, that we might not otherwise encounter. It shows us our own ability to accept and allow the eternal to be part of our selves. It allows us to image a marriage between our conscious and unconscious, fusing the twin dimensions of mind and society into a coherent, meaningful whole. It allows us to adventure in distant, unfamiliar landscapes while remaining close to home. Thus myth shows us that it is possible to relate ourselves to the grand and mysterious universe that surrounds and informs our being; it makes us aware of other orders of reality and experience and in that awareness makes the universe our home. It is a magic: it is the area of relationship between all those parts of experience that commonly divide us from ourselves, our universe, and our fellows.

[Myths] are not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act… A myth cannot be refuted since it is, at bottom, identical with the convictions of a group, being the expression of these convictions in the language of movement.